


Flicker

by appleandhoney



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Fix-It, M/M, Pining, Pining Bucky Barnes, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:20:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22135444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/appleandhoney/pseuds/appleandhoney
Summary: After all that, him and Fate have come to an understanding, Bucky reckons, to leave each other well alone.________An End Game fix it, with multiple timelines, a pining Bucky, and Steve being the unpredictable shit we know and love.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 5
Kudos: 153





	Flicker

2014

_Washington DC_

"The man on the bridge. Who was he?" 

"You met him earlier this week on another assignment."

His memory is a series of uneasy, unreliable flashes: a star, a red dress, a brief song through a window. It's been a long time. "I knew him."

"Impossible," one of the scientists in the room chuckles nervously, checking the machine's controls once again. The Soldier's chair hums with electricity and his back stiffens involuntarily in anticipation of the pain. "His memory will be wiped," the scientist reassured Pierce quickly. "He won't remember this conversation after the mission is complete."

The scientist is wrong. The Winter Soldier is very good at remembering.

"Wipe him and start over."

________

2009

_Odessa_

She has brown hair this time. 

From his vantage point in the curve of the mountain he can see it swept into a practical bun. But that's not right. Something niggles at the back of his mind. His eyes snap from the road to the oncoming car, calculating the exact moment to strike given the angle, the wind direction. The sun will be in the driver's eyes. Optimal conditions. He stills, willing his mind to blankness as the gun nestles snug into his shoulder. A name comes to him: Romanova. Red Room. Shouldn't she have red hair? Something's not right. 

He shoots out the back tires and the car veers precariously, front wheels screeching for purchase on the gravel road before tipping over the edge of the cliff. It's a long way down. Death, for sure, from this height. 

There's a flurry of hands at seatbelts and door handles, panicked shouting in Persian, two agents and the target tumbling out of the vehicle that's already sliding over, front wheels first. He calculated that they would die on the rocks below, crushed in the car. He now sees with terrible, perfect clarity that they won't. The brunette woman kicks out the back window, draws her gun and crouches in a protective stance in front of the panicked engineer who is wetting himself in fear. Target very much not eliminated. Red flickers through his mind and he feels strange all over, a sudden swooping in his gut like missing a step going down or losing a chunk of time. 

Stupid brain. Remembering is more trouble than it's worth, Soldier. He shoots the engineer through her stomach.

________

2014

_Washington DC_

Two days unfrozen and his left shoulder is still screaming at him as it thaws out, the dull ache of muscle welded to vibranium. The part of his brain responsible for memory had been deliberately and systematically wiped, mission after mission, year after year, to the point where he isn't sure if he is repeating experiences or if it's his mind playing tricks on him. His brain is Swiss cheese, all mouseholes and trapdoors of HYDRA's making. There are always a few things he remembers but he knows now not to trust his own memory, only his senses. 

A woman croons it's been a long, long time through the open window. He swears he's been to this city block before. Everything is familiar and nothing is. His metal fingers twitch. Focus, Soldier. 

The mission's target speaks quietly in the room's shadows, half hidden behind a bookcase. There's a shield behind that wall. How does he know that? In the apartment downstairs, a couple is burning dinner. A tomcat yowls in the distance. In the next apartment, a blonde woman that looks familiar. He frowns, mind and arm whirring. She's stepping out of a nice car, she's pulling a gun, she's kissing someone he loves square on the mouth. _Kiss me once, then kiss me twice, it's been a long, long time._ Can you move your seat up. 

He doesn't know why but he hates this song.

________

"Wipe him and start over."

________

2018

_Wakanda_

"Oh, quit your bleating at me," he says absently, checking in on the animals while he walks the perimeter. It's a force of habit to scan the tree-line, routine more than necessity; the kingdom was safe. Asylum isn't easy to obtain for people accused of the kind of war crimes he's responsible for. Maybe he doesn't deserve this refuge but he'll take it.

Bucky Barnes, Brooklyn big shot, wanted international assassin and now goatherd. Becca would come back from beyond the grave just to die laughing.

Things are simpler and quieter; he has time to piece together the confetti of his memories, trying to figure out which ones were fake or half-forgotten or warped by time and HYDRA. His serum-enhanced hearing picks up the sound of the king and a few guards making their way towards him. It's late for a royal visit. The sudden swooping dread again. He knows, with terrible, perfect clarity that T'Challa will take him away from the fragile peace he's built for himself. He feels like he's falling into water, he's falling from a train, one arm outstretched towards Steve. War was easy; he didn't mind dying so much, as long as Steve was safe, out of reach. 

He looks at the sleek black arm nestled in its case, the gold metal catching the light. He knows it'll fit perfectly. Nice one, Shuri. 

"Where's the fight?"

"On its way," T'Challa replies solemnly. Sky whales, aliens, lightning on a dark field, the battle of his life, all of it to come. 

________

2023

Coming back this time isn't painful. In 1945, he'd been strapped to a table and delirious with pain radiating from his whole left side when Steve Rogers, bigger than he'd ever been, filled up the doorway and dragged him back to safety. In comparison, this is nothing.

He sees Captain America, alone on the battlefield against a purpling sky with debris raining down like hellfire all around them. There are mechanical things swimming out of the clouds, six limbed robot monsters tearing across the ground, wizards doing whatever wizards do. Jesus fuck, and he thought HYDRA was twisted. But this – picking up his gun, watching Steve's six – is as easy as breathing. This he remembers.

_______

2023

_New York_

"You're going, huh." 

"What makes you say that, Buck?"

"I'll let Wilson know he's the new Cap."

Steve startles. "How––"

"Don't forget the shield. Captain America can't fly around on those wings. It's embarrassing."

________

1941

_Brooklyn_

Ever since they met, James Buchanan Barnes had a sixth sense for when his best friend was about to do something hare-brained. _Our James has the sight_ , his ma said, playfully winking at his father over dinner. He wasn't sure if she was teasing him but came to accept that she just wouldn't get it.

The first time it happened they were ten. It was a cold, creeping feeling in his belly and along his arm and he just knew, alright, he knew something was going to happen. The second before Steve Rogers launched himself off a low schoolyard wall at Clay Robinson ('He stole Emily's lunch, Buck, what was I supposed to do!' Steve howled afterwards, blood streaming down his face), Bucky pictured Clay punching Steve's nose, so the sickening crack didn't come as a surprise. 

It happened again when they were eleven, and eleven and a half, and thirteen, little flashes of moments that flickered through him of the stupid, noble things Steve would do before they even happened. Steve picking himself off the ground in a grubby alley, Steve squaring off to the latest enemy, Steve filling up all the gaps in Bucky's life.

By the time they were teenagers, Bucky had gotten so used to life as Steve Rogers' best friend that it felt less like deja vu and more like constant inevitability, moments he knew would happen before they did. He never told Steve. The delighted expression when Bucky turned up, at Steve's side just as the latest fight started, was worth it. Steve just thought Bucky had uncanny timing. 

________

2023

_New York_

"You're going, huh." It's not a question.

"What makes you say that, Buck?" 

Bucky smiles tightly though it doesn't reach his eyes. "I always knew when you were going to do something stupid before you did, punk."

"That so?"

"Yup." 

Steve sighs, pushes a square hand through his hair. He looks exhausted. "Someone's gotta get these stones in the right place. Listen, Buck, I – I won't be long. Then I'm coming straight back. Bruce said the whole thing will feel like five seconds to you, no more." 

"Sure," Bucky says evenly. A small, mean part of him wants Steve to hurt. "Give your wife my regards." An awful silence stretches out between them, fraying his nerves. Banner is tinkering with the time machine platform, sneaking them worried looks.

Steve clears his throat, though he can't hide how much Bucky's comment stung and bewildered him. "Listen, uh, if I – Sam's gonna be the new Captain America. Tell him, won't you? He'll need you. Try not to kill each other."

Bucky's face shutters. "It won't be the same," he finally manages. Maybe there's another world where he's more selfish, where he dredges up courage from his younger, cocky self and says everything that needs to be said in this moment. Maybe in another timeline Steve Rogers will never be out of reach. 

"I'm going to miss you too. Don't do anything stupid until I get back."

________

1970

_Camp Lehigh_

Steve can't help himself. He blames nostalgia, post-traumatic stress, Bucky not being there to talk him out of stupid decisions like he usually does.

He slips into the darkened office and sees her through the blinds, reading the file in her hands and speaking to someone just beyond view. He fights the impulse to call out her name. 

Her desk is neatly decorated with framed photos: Peggy on her wedding day, two tow-haired children at a piano, a group of kids screaming in delight at a birthday party, Peggy in a smart suit shaking the president's hand, her and Howard and Maria dressed to the nines at a cocktail party. He's feels like a ghost, pulled through time before he's ready. 

________

2023

_New York_

Steve looked as old as Bucky felt. 

This wasn't supposed to happen. This was always going to happen. The two of them, chasing each other through the years and never quite falling into place. Bucky blamed his Swiss cheese brain and all of that dying and coming back to life because he should have been yelling, fighting, shaking some good sense back into his friend but all he could think about was how utterly random life was. How brutally unforgiving. The train, losing memories against his will, losing decades to cryostatis, losing parts of himself until he couldn't even remember who he was, climbing back into the cold again under T'Challa's watchful gaze, getting dusted for five years, walking through a space-time portal onto the batshit-craziest fight he ever saw. What were the chances. After all that, him and Fate have come to an understanding, Bucky reckons, to leave each other well alone. He doesn't ask for more than he deserves.

"You make it back for that dance?" Bucky asks quietly. He perches carefully the edge of the bench, in sniper stillness as he was trained, as if any movement would dislodge this moment and smash it to pieces. Time has ravaged his mind but his eyesight is still perfect: he spotted Steve's gold ring catch the light a hundred yards off. 

"A first dance too." Steve's smile is wistful. 

"I'm happy for you, pal," Bucky murmurs. He sent up a fleeting thanks to whatever deity still gave a shit about James Buchanan Barnes to make sure his voice didn't waver at all. "I'm happy for you."

________

2023

_New York_

"You're going, huh." It's not a question. 

"What makes you say that, Buck?"

Bucky tears his gaze away. He feels tired and resigned and about two hundred years old, nothing more than a brief glint in time. Life flickers through him: he's boarding a train, he's weighing up plums, he's lashing out in a narrow stairwell, back to back with a body he knows down to his bones. He's falling. _It's been a long, long time._ Bucky has lived through more lifetimes than he thought possible. 

"You never knew when to give up the fight, Rogers. We're not at the end of the line yet."

Steve looks gutted. "That's not fair, Buck."

"Yeah. That was," Bucky says haltingly, "unfair. I'm right though, you're going back and staying. With Carter." His voice is slow and clipped and it feels like he's grinding out every word from a clenched jaw. He hopes his ribs are reinforced with vibranium because there's no way he can withstand this unbearable pressure, the feeling of his whole chest caving in from familiar dread and yawning sadness. He can't watch this: the alternate realities, the infinite timelines and possibilities, the lost chances and missed opportunities converging into one man, standing there in his ludicrous suit, walking away to do impossible things. 

Here Bucky was, more than a hundred years since he was born and about eighty years since he figured he would die, watching Steve Rogers throw himself head-first into multiple pasts, different strands of time, jumping in and out of it like a kid at the seaside. It breaks Bucky's heart clean in two. He is suddenly, fiercely grateful he wasn't around to watch Steve fly that plane into the ocean. 

"Going back and staying. That so? You askin' or tellin'?" Steve prods, craning his head down to meet Bucky's downcast gaze. 

Somewhere in the past, through a time vortex only Steve Rogers would be foolhardy enough to walk straight into, Peggy is in a red dress, waiting for the love of her life. Bucky can't even look at his. 

"Steve," he says, his voice low and miserable, "for the hundredth time in our lives, I'm askin' you not do anything stupid. I get it, it's is your choice. It's bigger than the next mission or saving the country or being a good soldier and I reckon the world owes you that happiness. But – " his whole body is trembling now, "you gotta come back to me. I never breathed a word before but it's different now – it's a different time. Steve, you gotta know this. Peggy wants you but I need you." He swallows hard. "I love you. I think I always have. So if you decide to go, I can't stop you. God knows I can't. But I had to say it in case you were still making up your mind."

Bucky is breathing hard, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, his vision going blurry. The fear of admitting his long-held secret is nothing compared to the fear that Steve, despite now knowing the depth and strength of Bucky's love, and will still walk into the past and stay there with Peggy. Getting dusted were nothing compared to the panic leeching through his body right this second.

Little flashes, all those alternate possibilities and timelines, flicker through him so fast he feels nauseous: Steve swaying cheek to cheek with Peggy, Steve nuzzling along Bucky's jaw, Steve pressing a kiss to dark hair. Always Steve, there at the inevitable center of his world.

Bucky holds his tears back until after Steve disappears from the platform. 

________

2023

Bucky makes his way over to a bench overlooking the lake, turning his back on where Steve winked out of existence in this timeline. 

He wonders if he can get a lift back to Wakanda, if T'Challa will let him live out his days there. He thinks about his little farm, the blue mountains in the distance, grumpy goats, Shuri making adjustments to his arm while chattering happily about alien technology. Not a bad life, all things considered.

"You good man?"

"Yeah, Wilson. I'm good." Bucky pauses around the lump in his throat. He looks out over the water. He knows that Wilson will keep poking until Bucky breaks and says something, so might as well get it out of the way now while Steve's jump is still fresh. "Not everyone gets to start over and, you know, it's been a long time since he had someone knows him like that. Before all this." He casually waves a hand as if to say: _war, super-soldiers, Tibetan magic portals, time machines, losing the love of your life._

"You talking about Carter or yourself?" 

He avoids flinching, just. Goddamn, he forgot how much of a perceptive pain in the ass Sam Wilson is. "Steve gets his second chance. He deserves it." Bucky said, slow and clipped. 

"So you're happy." Sam's voice is oh-so-carefully neutral. 

"Happy for him," Bucky replies. That's enough for now.

It's been hours. Banner starts dismantling the time travel machinery. Out on the lake, the loons are calling to each other. 

________

2023

"What the fuck. _What_ the _fuck_ is that. Steve, what are you doing?" 

Steve, the evergreen little shit, grins up at him. Gold glints in his hand, catching the light of the setting sun.

"Sorry it took a little longer than five seconds," he says breezily. "I had to go back for my ma's ring." 

Sam makes a garbled sound from behind them. 

"Get up off your knee, Steven Grant Rogers, I swear." Bucky hauls him up by the collar of the quantum suit and steadies his shaking hands on Steve's broad shoulders, fingers involuntarily clutching at the silvery material. Bucky doesn't know where to look, eyes darting between Steve's wide, wide smile and Sarah Roger's delicate wedding band cupped in Steve's hands. Bucky feels like he's flying apart, like he's gasping for the first painful breath out of cryo and standing in full summer sun and falling off a helicarrier, all at the same time. Of all the stupid, hare-brained, reckless things Steve has done in his life, Bucky never saw this one coming. 

"I'm with you till the end of the line, Bucky. Always will be."


End file.
